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Bathymetry of the northeast corner of the Caribbean plate showing the major faults and plate boundaries; view looking south-west. The main bathymetric features of this area include: the Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc; the old inactive volcanic arc of the Greater Antilles (Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Hispaniola); the Muertos Trough; and the Puerto Rico Trench formed at the plate boundary ...
Tectonic plates generally focus deformation and volcanism at plate boundaries.However, the Hawaii hotspot is more than 3,200 kilometers (1,988 mi) from the nearest plate boundary; [1] while studying it in 1963, Canadian geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson proposed the hotspot theory to explain these zones of volcanism so far from regular conditions, [3] a theory that has since come into wide acceptance.
The oceanic Nazca plate subducts beneath the continental South American plate at the Peru–Chile Trench. Just north of the Nazca plate, the oceanic Cocos plate subducts under the Caribbean plate and forms the Middle America Trench. Oceanic crust of the South American plate subducts under the Caribbean plate in the Lesser Antilles subduction zone.
Continental-continental divergent/constructive boundary Oceanic divergent boundary: mid-ocean ridge (cross-section/cut-away view). In plate tectonics, a divergent boundary or divergent plate boundary (also known as a constructive boundary or an extensional boundary) is a linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a divergent or constructive plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic, the ridge separates the North American from the Eurasian plate and the African plate, north and south of the Azores triple junction.
Examples include the Hawaii, Iceland, and Yellowstone hotspots. A hotspot's position on the Earth's surface is independent of tectonic plate boundaries, and so hotspots may create a chain of volcanoes as the plates move above them. There are two hypotheses that attempt to explain their origins.
Virginia Dale, a renowned scientist with local ties, has again returned along with her ecological research team to sites catastrophically destroyed in the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens ...
The location where two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Plate boundaries are where geological events occur, such as earthquakes and the creation of topographic features such as mountains, volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and oceanic trenches. The vast majority of the world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries, with the Pacific ...